Creoles Essay

599 Words3 Pages
A creole is merely a degenerate form of language whose use is fairly restricted. Do you agree? In the past, pidgins have arisen because countries did not understand each other but needed to communicate. Pidgins are usually short-lived but when it ends, a creole begins. A creole is a pidgin that becomes the first language of a speech community. Creoles are not degenerating or used restrictedly. This is because existing creoles show that they are highly complex contact languages. Secondly, they are used by many people in the world today and are part of their culture. And lastly, creoles are still evolving and expanding today. Creoles are not degenerating because they have their own distinctive linguistic features and styles. Although creoles may have very ‘unEnglish-looking’ structures, they are uniquely developed with distinctive grammar and vocabulary features. Creoles are similar to English in some aspects of the language as they are historically connected to the Germanic dialects which English evolved from. An example of a creole is Tok Pisin which is used in Papua New Guinea. In Tok Pisin, reduplication, which is a feature of verb morphology, is widespread and is distinctly different from other varieties of English. This involves the repetition of the first syllable or first two syllables of the verb root. Creole pronouns can also be more complex than those of the standard language as the creoles distinguish singular, dual, trial and plural forms while other varieties of English only have singular and plural forms. Creoles are not deteriorating as they have complex linguistic features. Although creoles are not used throughout the whole world, they are still used by quite a large number of individuals. There are more than 200 types of creoles used currently in the world with many being English-based creoles. Like all languages, each creole has its own cultural
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